BBCNOW/Hickox

There are still some weeks to go before the centenary of Michael Tippett's birth on January 2, but the season of commemoration has already begun. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales championed his work in his last decade and the memory of Tippett clambering onto the St David's Hall platform in rose-pink desert boots to acknowledge fervent applause is still vivid.

However, this performance of Tippett's last orchestral work, The Rose Lake, lacked impact in parts, perhaps because of the difficulties of sustaining his sometimes slightly tenuous musical argument through the half-hour piece.

The romance of the title is seductive: inspired by the lake in Senegal whose colour is transformed by the high midday sun, Tippett's song without words traces an arc from dawn to dusk. Its musical zenith, the lake in full song, was ecstatic, with Richard Hickox exhorting the BBCNOW strings to a rich sound: the trumpets were brilliant and perhaps, to those who experience synaesthesia, translucent pink.

The more obviously engaging effect came from Tippett's use of a highly expanded percussion section. The 36 RotoToms replacing timpani at the back of the stage created a strong visual focus when the two players danced in tandem, their beautifully modulated combinations with other instruments adding to the atmospheric soundscape.

The profound influence of Beethoven on Tippett, so audible in the string lines of The Rose Lake, was reflected in Beethoven's Choral Symphony. The early movements, admittedly, suffered from a lack of rhythmic and structural cohesion as well as Hickox's almost perfunctory treatment of the adagio. But the finale was lifted high with Neal Davies's rousing bass solo - Sally Matthews, Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Rhys Meirion made up the solo quartet - and, ultimately, the unbounded joy of the BBC National Chorus of Wales and Côr Caerdydd.